Colette

Renard joins Colette in her carriage on her journey down the mountain.

Given her great retinue, with multitude porters and guards and coachmen for the several wagons stuffed with her luggage, she hardly needs Renard as another bodyguard. Seated across from her in her wagon, festooned with silk and cushioned with velvet, and with absolutely no view of the road or its threats, Renard indeed fails to feel anything like such a bodyguard.

Which should be expected, since this is now his fiancee.

The family accepted his marriage pronouncement with such ease it was unreal. But Renard too doubted not for a moment, not at all, zero, that he would succeed. For the second he resolved to take the job in Fayette, he envisioned he would leave with the Lord’s daughter dangling off his arm. This outcome so feels not strange, but natural, or even ordained.

Ordained, pre-ordained. I know only how to open myself to the appropriate channels of esteem, Pleione said. It’s both a heartening and scary thought.

Colette gazes out the window with an airy smile. Her own comfort only reinforces how natural the development was. She has no questions, has no complaints, and for Renard, this is perfect.

Because rather than clawing money paycheck by paycheck, marrying into a family with wealth is an easy way to acquire a palace.

In which Renard would put Isobel.

Is it mercenary? Yes. Does he care about Colette? No. What regret should he have about it? Daughters of noblemen already know they exist to be spoils of war. It isn’t fair, but—

—Guilt twangs through his chest at the thought. Is it not horrible to live knowing you will never marry someone who loves you?

Suddenly uncertain, but sure the proposal wasn’t mistaken, Renard scrambles for conversation. If he could assure that she’s the most beautiful thing he’s seen, who melted his heart… but that would be a lie. Should he tell a funny story, then? Or tell her how happy he is to have a future together? But what’s the point of making gestures to please her when he doesn’t mean them, and doesn’t want to follow through with them, at all!

Still staring out the window, Colette breezily asks if Renard ever gets much time to explore the towns and cities he stays in between hunts.

Nervous about failing to be a good guide, Renard boldly assures he knows many good places — while inwardly panicking that said places are all bawdy taverns, where he wouldn’t dare take a noblewoman.

She waits for him to continue.

Of course, I would take you around! Oh god, why is he saying this!? But, ah, for a woman of your standing…

Colette twists a lock of her hair and tells Renard bluntly that being well-travelled doesn’t mean much when that time is all spent in inns.

The directness, and correctness, spears Renard with shame. “I—I said nothing of—" He stammers rebuttal, but her cynical smile silences him, and his face only flushes redder. How has this woman so precisely managed to cut through him and make him feel so horrible.

Colette muses that it’s rather odd to know so much about a person, at least by reputation and hearsay, and then for her first meeting with them to be a proposal. In a fairytale, it would be perfect. And it’s nice to imagine things like that… she trails off, tone softening. I’ve always wondered how you can work as hard as you do.

I—I, Renard stammers. Are you quite serious, asking this?

I love knowing secrets, she says. And I keep them well.

Rattled by her incisiveness, Renard freezes. A thousand evasions, insults, snubs, jokes, and rejections bolt through his mind, but even so, these impulses cannot overwhelm the surprisingly solid core in him that truly, does want to talk about this.

…Truly, does want to talk about this. His shoulders slump and the wall falls, and what tumbles out of his mouth is: “My father… he was a stern man."

And to be a good son, I took up his ethic! Hoho! Yes, I have merely refined his vigilance and pointed it towards a purpose so great and vital, it lights me with such tireless passion! Oh father, I owe the success I am to you, and to all who took me to their bosom.

Renard’s throat tightens and mouth puckers. In lucid counterpoint to ideas of bravado, so many doubts and confessions plague his mind. ‘I am not sure he ever loved me’, ‘Nobody truly believed in me’, ‘I am not truly worth anything’, ‘I see more of myself in the darkness than the light’, ‘I damned myself in attempts to run from my nature‘, ‘I wish I could be like light, but all I can do is reflect.’ Although, those who have given me their mercies and stability, I do truly adore.

He does want to talk about it — but even touching this mass of dread, doubt, and inadequacy to even be alive is too much. The more and more he looks at it, the heavier and heavier it weighs, and the heavier it weighs, the more solid the sense that he is fooling himself with these women and with these prospects of a future at all, and what he really should do, is pack up for Nix as soon as he’s able so he can finally let himself die.

“Is he not around anymore?" Colette asks.

Renard trembles, setting his hand on his knee. What did become of his father? Renard is without any idea. He’s not heard word of him since enchanting Kingslayer, and even if he did follow up, can confidently suppose that the man would not want to see him.

Unable to confront or express this deep pain between himself and his father, Renard’s thoughts shift in a strange direction.

“C-Colette, I have my own question," he says. “If a man… if villainy were a counted weight, scaled upon scale like coin, and we may know how deeply into it is any heart sunk… is slaying the ones who can never rise an act that brings men to virtue?"

In fact, is ending evil not the most virtuous act? Between a man who embraces a woman while a rat nips at her feet, and a man who stomps on the rat with no affection, is the second not the more venerable? Renard would never judge another human in such a way, but with ghouls the distinction between ‘maybe good inside’ and ‘purely malicious’ is unambiguous — they are, unfortunately, all the latter.

But a man without tender affection surely cannot be good.

Perhaps the answer must be both. To kill the evil, then love what it oppresses… but that may be too much for a black heart like Renard’s.

“I think you are," says Colette.

You barely know me! Renard clenches his fist, but lets the anger his between teeth wisp into nothing.

“It amazes me that you didn’t die," she says airily, but with a coaxing edge of compassion.

“I did try," Renard spits. “Many times."

Colette rises from her seat, plants herself beside Renard, and cradles his head to her breast to kiss him, the way one kisses a child.

And though the sympathy she has for this weak, cold, and dark part of him leaves him too soothed to lash out, clinging instead to the sentiment this pampering rises of ‘maybe? Maybe?’, the wall that closes over his heart is numb, and grey as steel.

Renard and Colette arrive at a Fayette estate.

Too depressed and exhausted to help the servants move the luggage, and not actually meant to do that as the man of the house anyway, Renard retreats to ‘his’ bedroom to pen a letter to Isobel.

He had hoped thinking of her would cheer him, but his quill just taps the parchment, no words of love or devotion flowing. Even to brag of the 800 lucras feels hollow. Colette’s stupid game of questions has scooped everything inside him the way a young doctor rips the guts from a frog, dissecting him of that joyful drive he only recently won.

And though he tries to remind himself physically of the feeling of Isobel’s warmth, this does not work.

Stupid Colette! How has this woman done this to him, and why did he answer? She romped into his soul within a second of meeting him and ripped everything he wanted buried out. It has made him too conscious of how terrible he feels to even feign being happy, and worse, feels that if he does, she’ll strangle him with more of those disapproving, judgemental looks, then rend him apart with more cutting questions. If she wants him to be honest — well, what on earth for! The honest him sucks!

But with the sympathy she showed, maybe she does want the best for him…

Kneading his brow, Renard adjusts his grip on the quill and reattempts his letter to Isobel. Dearest Isobel, lily of Sebilles…

Tap, tap, tap, goes the quill. Stupid. He has already used these tired words before. Anyone would know how passionless is this letter.

…Thine jewel’d eyes pierce this writ to mine soul, so keen as the brightest King’s jewels. The spectre of you comes to me, crown’d in cowls of opal and ruby, but it is the sculpture of your face, sweet madonna of mercy, that beams bright as the sun. What I have done in these months for you…

So the letter goes to the end, concluding with the plunder of the 800 lucras, which he shuffles into the envelope.

Renard slumps back in his chair, staring over the opulent room.

Fiddlesticks! Now what. And what are these horrible lies he is telling to Isobel? For how excellent the plan of marrying for wealth was, now that he has pursued it, there is no way to pass that wealth on. Coming into this, he had envisioned… he’s not even sure. That he would sweep up a house and a fortune from Colette, Isobel would morph into a queen and true woman of the house, and Colette in rags would meekly, quietly disappear into a broom cupboard. It’s nonsense.

Especially given that Renard does not even have the money. He is only a fiance. If he actually wants Colette’s fortune, he needs to court her well enough in the following months that she and her family cement the marriage. But if he puts on bravado, Colette will rip him apart so he can’t! Then without the bravado, he cannot care about Isobel!

And he can’t truly make Colette disappear — that’s unconscionable and defeating the point.

It’s these women, these damned women! Renard twists the quill so hard it snaps. These hopes and comforts they offer, petty distractions from his fate in Nix. There’s no future to be had with either of them. But as he thinks of Marion, and again settles that dreadful core of conviction that Renard will go back to face the monster that did that, a thought tugs like a fishing-hook that keeps him grounded here, and it’s the thought of, what if he’s messing up?

He could just go along with Colette…

…

What is he thinking! Renard pulls his face as far as it will stretch. He can’t court a noblewoman!

Cornered without a solution, Renard hurries out of the bedroom to the lounge. Colette is there, seated in an armchair with tea and book. Renard announces he is going out to get water. Colette absently turns a page of her book and notes quizzically that it’s rather late, but, unbothered, doesn’t press further.

Relieved, Renard beelines to the stables, tacks up his horse, and flees with incredible speed to Sebilles.